Advent at our place

The old year is dying.  Slowly but surely Cold is creeping over the Northern Hemisphere.  We have celebrated the Harvest Home and remembered the dead.  And now even the Light is dying as Nature drifts into a long, cold sleep. 

But where there is death, there is re-birth.  The end is also the beginning.  The Christian season of Advent has started and there is much to do and much to look forward to.

Advent is an important time in our family, made more important because in Advent 2003, we were waiting for our own baby, who was born at Midwinter.

As children get very excited about Christmas and have no idea about time, I find an Advent calendar an excellent way of letting excitement mount steadily and slowly.  We have three Advent calendars.  One is a “normal” one, with numbered windows to open.  I buy a new one each year.  This year we have one based on a picture by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, which I bought on my birthday outing.  Our second one we have every year.  For each Sunday in Advent there is a verse of a song, the final verse gets opened on Christmas day and, by then, even little ones know all the words because we sing it together every day.  I’ll dig the carol book out and get it on the recommendations page for you all.

Our third Advent calendar changes from year to year.  This year’s has a star to stick on the window everyday, angels on Sundays.  Each day also has a little note to say either what will happen that day, for example “going to hear granddad sing in the choir” or gives a task, for example “decorate front door”.  In this way we will get through our Christmas preparations at a measured pace and nothing will be forgotten. 

At Midwinter we get the chance to celebrate the birth of our own Midwinter baby, made so special because she was so unexpected.  Her birth, in which I came close to the gates of death, was a true end/beginning threshold for our whole family.  The energy that she brought into the world with her has sustained us through many dark hours and brought us strength and joy where we could only summon up despair.  On her birthday, we don’t remember her birth rather we celebrate the years of life she has brought to us. 

Midwinter itself is a time to bring light into the world, so we light fires inside and out, and candles and let all the electric lights blaze.  I like to think that our house, in the middle of the wide fields, looks like a ship sailing across wintry seas, brazenly showing light to all who creep past in darkness. 

Advent means candles and greenery in this house.  Our Advent wreath will be made on Saturday.  First we will go up into the hills to a friend’s house and from there we will go into the forest.  And there we will collect a car full of greenery to make wreathes for table and doors...and long decorated poles and bows so the entrances to our house are green with life at this deadest part of the year.  The table wreath will have four red candles on, one for each Sunday in Advent.  Mistletoe, to bless all who go in and out of the house, we will get from our biggest apple tree out in the orchard. 

The Christmas tree will require a second trip up to the forest.  There we can choose our tree from the snowy hillside and bring it home to decorate.  Our tree is always decorated with natural decorations, no tacky glitz for us!  The children make decorations every year and the best get collected and used again.  The tree has real beeswax candles on.  We are nervous about it every year but it does look and smell so much better than a plastic tree with tinsel and fairy lights!  The candles on the tree and the table wreath only get lit when we are all gathered and get blown out as soon as movement starts again. 

In the next few weeks, our house will slowly but surely get more and more decorated and festive.  Today the party has begun and it will go on ‘til Hogmanay, which I like to celebrate by getting very drunk! 

That’s an idea of what we do...what do you do?Send your comments to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it